by Dan Mitchell | Jan 5, 2019 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
I’m currently in Chile, enjoying the warm sun and doing research on the nation’s impressive economic performance. I met yesterday with Jose Pinera, the former minister who created Chile’s incredibly successful system of personal retirement accounts (he’s also one of...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 4, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
I’ve previously explained why I don’t have a dog in the current shutdown fight in Washington. Simply stated, Trump isn’t fighting to make government smaller. Instead he wants more spending for a wall and isn’t even proposing some offsetting reductions to keep...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 3, 2019 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
I despise the death tax. It should be abolished. My main objection is that it is immoral. If a person earns money, pays tax on the money, and then responsibly saves and invests the money (which generally requires paying another layer of tax), it is reprehensible that...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 2, 2019 | Blogs, Tax Competition, Taxation
I’ve written many times about people and businesses escaping high-tax states and moving to low-tax states. This tax-driven migration rewards states with good policy and punishes those with bad policy. And now we have some new data. The Wall Street...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 1, 2019 | Blogs, Trade
I started my end-of-year “best and worst” series back in 2013, but didn’t begin my start-of-year “hopes and fears” series until 2017. In that first year, I got part of what I hoped for (some tax reform and a bit of regulatory easing) and part of what I feared...